


sin city's cold and empty

by robinlikeitshot



Series: Whumptober2020 [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Hallucinated Death, Joker Junior - Freeform, No. 16: Hallucinations, No. 4: Buried Alive, No. 8: Abandoned | Isolation, Scarecrow's Fear Toxin (DCU), Tim Drake Angst, Tim Drake Gets a Hug, Tim Drake-centric, Whumptober 2020, hallucinated burying alive, hallucinated death of a minor(its jason), hallucinated suicide, mature rating is for the following tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:34:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26757343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robinlikeitshot/pseuds/robinlikeitshot
Summary: He should have known he could never have escaped from here. Why had he even bothered the first time? It had only gotten worse, after all.“Tim!” Tim frowns at the faint call of his name, before brushing it off, dismissing the hallucination for what it was. He was insane, just like Dick had said.He was destined to be alone, to kill everyone he’d ever loved.“Tim!”He wasn’t wanted, he-“Tim!”
Series: Whumptober2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949254
Comments: 9
Kudos: 309
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	sin city's cold and empty

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so if you haven't looked at the tags yet, please do so because this fic does have some pretty graphic violence, and i assure you i have not used that tag lightly.  
> Otherwise, please enjoy reading my experiment in wondering what the worst possible thing i could do to a person was. Thanks to FanOfSeriousBlack and al (dumble-daddy on tumblr) for helping me beta this one, and also just, a tremendous thanks to Mizuphae who helped brainstorm and strangle this monster of a one-shot into submission.  
> Enjoy!

Tim wakes up in an empty graveyard. The last thing he remembers is Dick’s shout, the white of his domino’s wide as Tim’s vision faded to black-

Brushing off the dirt that clings to his forearms as he stumbles to his feet, Tim turns around, coughing slightly at the faint traces of ash in the air. His eyes catch on the orange sky, the dark clouds brushing the tops of the trees that he knows border the Wayne Family Cemetery.

Why is he here? Tim was in Upper Gotham, nowhere near Bristol when Crane had attacked and the all-hands signal had gone out, securing the warehouse with the escaped criminal when-

That train of thought stops in its tracks when his gaze lands on two gravestones, side by side that a niggling suspicion in the back of his mind told him had appeared out of thin air. Names are etched into the front, names that Tim had seen Bruce kneel in front of more times than he can count, glimpses stolen from the slight part of the curtains of his bedroom window. They’re old, tendrils of green crawling up their crumbling stone, the ivy seeming to grow even as Tim’s eyes widen. He reaches out, the pads of his fingers barely brushing the ‘M’ before the stone falls apart, fragmenting into dust as he watches. 

“No,” he murmurs, trying to catch the dust being swept away by the seemingly random wind. When he turns his head, the same thing happens to Thomas Wayne’s tombstone, and when he scrambles to try and grasp the name, that honorific of ‘Father,’ it crumbles away in his hands, too.

Spinning around wildly, Tim gasps as he notices the whole graveyard has suddenly filled with headstones, still awash with that ugly muted orange light. A sound that he doesn’t want to admit is a whimper wrenches out of his chest as his eyes land on another—this one newer and smaller—with a ripped up handful of white dandelions in front of it.

Jason Todd. Robin. A good hero, a good son. Tim shakes his head, collapsing on the dirt in front of the memorial, of him, trying to remember that Jason was alive, and was the Red Hood. That he had come back, tried to murder Tim on occasion, and had been trading quips back-and-forth with him right before the syringe had plunged into the gap in his armor—but that doesn't explain the grave in front of him. The dirt looks like it's just been turned, and the carving on the stone looks entirely new. This can't be real. It can’t. 

Maybe this is a dream. That would explain it. But the stone feels so real and cold, so unforgiving beneath Tim’s green gloves as he traces the J, that he knows it’s real. Jason is dead, he’d been killed by the Joker, Tim remembers, his hero—his hero’s gravestone is disintegrating beneath Tim’s fingers, spreading out from where the gauntlets touch in cracks till the thing is breaking apart, falling with a heavy thud before sinking into the ground.

“No, no, no,” Tim begs frantically, clawing at where the stone had sunk, the fresh dirt giving way easily as he digs his fingers in. It takes barely a moment before he hits the rotting wood of the boy’s coffin, precisely six inches deep. He ignores the alarm bells ringing in the back of his mind over the ache of splinters digging into his hands as he rips the box open without a thought, heaving a dry sob when he realizes it’s empty. The wood begins to deteriorate around him, whirling away in the humid breeze that brings with it the foul stench of rotting, burning corpses.

***  
“Fuck!”

Oracle’s voice in his ear immediately responds. “Hood, report.”

Jason’s already got a handful of Timmy, right after punching the lights out of the perp who’d tried to stick him. The attempt had succeeded, too, given by how the boy had immediately fallen unconscious. Dick jumps in front of them, trying to block off the next wave of Scarecrow’s thugs.

“They got Red. Uh, new strain, I think. He’s unresponsive and the toxin worked way too fast for it to be the regular kind,” Jason reports, administering the antidote as Robin lands behind them to cover their six. It'd hopefully dull the effects, but the problem can't be fixed till they were back in the cave. 

Dick spins around after landing a roundhouse. “Get him to the cave,” he shouts, lighting up his escrima sticks again and shocking two thugs that go down like bags of flour.

Jason grits his teeth as he looks back down at Tim, who’s breath has sped up, brilliant mind caught up in whatever hellish hallucination the fear toxin had fabricated for him. He knows it’d only get worse from there, but as much as he hates to say it, “I can’t. We left our bikes down Dillon St., and we’re surrounded. I won’t make it with the kid on me.”

Twisting his body to avoid the barrage of bullets that Robin’s doing his best to push back from the kid, Jason picks up the syringe that still has the vigilante’s blood on it mixed with trace amounts of the poison. Tucking it into an evidence bag from his utility, Jason pulls out his gun, shooting the leg of a man who’d managed to pass Dickie’s defense. They can't stay here, that much is obvious, and they would get overwhelmed if they remain at the epicenter of Crane’s latest attempt to overrun the Upper East Side and get to the reservoir. 

As always, Oracle saves them. “The girls have finished apprehending Crane, I’ll send them your way. B just finished stabilizing the bridge, so he should be there in forty seconds.”

“Think you can hold out for that long, twerp?” Jason asks, hitting a man who'd been sneaking up on Robin’s blindspot in the shoulder.

Sweeping another one off their feet, Damian sends a dark look his way. “Silence, Hood,” before he’s back to smacking perps on the head with the flat of his sword.

“Gladly,” Jason mutters, pinning Tim to the ground by his shoulders as he begins to thrash, the fear toxin amping up. 

***

No. Tim pulls himself out of the child’s shallow grave, barely noticing that some of the dust has stuck to the knees of his green tights (and isn't that odd, when he'd just been fighting crime in Red Robin’s black and red, when the blood son is the one wearing his old colors-) as he trips over another in his attempts to back away.

Janet Drake is crumbling away before he can even touch her.

“Wait, Mom, don’t go,” he begs, but she doesn’t listen, she never does, and he’s left fisting the dust that somehow rips itself out of his grip to evaporate in the boiling air. He’s gasping through tears that had been absent at her funeral, the gray snow freezing them before they even have a chance to fall.

The harsh wind rips his Robin cape off his shoulders too, and when he reaches back to try and reach for it, he’s distracted by his dad’s plot. The black material flutters off, even though it's too heavy to be picked up by a breeze of all things, catching on one of the towering evergreens near the edge of the plot before flying off to the muggy skyline. Tim’s thoughts are far from his cape, though, as he practically launches himself at the gravestone, holding on with both of his arms. He is horrified to find that the second his hot tears touch the stone, they fizz, sizzling as it eats its way through the words, ‘Father, Husband.’

“I’m sorry, Dad, please, I’m sorry, don’t-” But it’s futile, and the dust soon disappears like the rest. Tim buries his face into his hands, feeling like he’s about to retch as his dad leaves him again and it’s all his fault.

He regrets opening his eyes because the moment he looks up, Superboy’s likeness is captured in gray and white, so different from Conner’s bright eyes and tanned skin and colorful smile. Tim gets up on shaky knees, his voice trembling as he calls out, “Kon?” There’s no reply, which doesn’t make any sense because Kon promised to always come when he called, he’d come back, he can't be dead-

The stone is hard beneath his hand, but even though he was invulnerable, Conner was never this… cold. This time, he starts falling apart in the chest first, black spreading from his heart to Tim’s fingers, and he’s drawing back, eyes horrified as his best friend disappears, the bright grin, that mouth parted in an immortal laugh going last.

Tim doesn’t even try to reach for him.

Right behind the statue is another stone, but smaller, and Tim immediately knows who it is without even reading the engraving. The second the knowledge passes his mind, it's crumbling, and Tim drops to his knees again, but he’s too slow, or maybe Bart’s too fast, and it disappears before he can even read it.

There’s another, on his right. It doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t, because Steph’s not dead, she was never dead, it was all a lie, it can’t be real, it can’t.

“You’re alive,” Tim whispers, begs the gravestone, but it’s silent. It doesn’t speak in Steph’s bright voice, bubbling and overflowing like when she got excited about something. Of course, it doesn’t, it’s just a rock after all, and Tim’s learned the hard way that dead people usually don’t answer the pleas of the living. 

When Steph blows away, Tim can’t move, except to scratch at his face, trying to pull the domino off. He doesn’t have any solvent in his belt, though, so when it comes off it’s with little bits of skin stuck to it, and Tim blinks to clear the blood and tears from his eyes. He can’t feel any pain, even as he sets the bloody Robin mask on top of where his childhood girlfriend’s grave once was.

There’s an oppressive presence at his back. Tim doesn’t want to confront it, doesn’t want to turn around, but something makes him, and it seems like all the air is punched out of him when he falls, gripping the solid stone with Bruce’s name on it. Mentor, father, son, _dead._

“No,” Tim says before pushing himself on his feet as he stares at the unforgiving sight. “No!” he screams, voice echoing through the empty expanse around him as he shakes his head, frantic. “You’re not, you’re not dead, you can’t be,” he says, every breath pulling its way from his throat, scratching daggers into the back of his mouth. “You’re lost, you’re just lost, I-”

***  
Black Bat and Batgirl descend upon the horde of criminals like a blessing, or at least that’s the way Dick feels as Cass begins taking out Crane’s men with a brutal efficiency at his right as Stephanie leaps over them to help out Dami. Together, they’re able to clear a larger circle around Jason and Timmy, who’s started muttering things that wrench at Dick’s heart and make him want to stop listening. 

‘- _you’re not dead, you’re just lost, you-_ ” Because it’s Dick’s fault, that no one believed him when he thought Bruce was alive, what Tim’s seeing right now is _his_ fault.

Guilt rises in his chest as Tim begins scratching and pulling at his domino, Jay pinning his hands down to keep him from revealing his identity and hurting himself; Dick was supposed to be covering his little brother, who had been trying to synthesize an antidote to Scarecrow’s newest gas, when he’d allowed himself to be overwhelmed for the few seconds it took one of the goons to dart past him and inject Tim with a whole lot of bad news. Another mark in his ledger of failures, in regard to his little brother. But he can’t let himself get distracted now, especially with a bat down and the rest of them exhausted.

They all release a sigh of relief when Batman arrives, the battle quickly turning in their favor as the news that Crane had been apprehended spreads through the ranks, causing many of them to turn tail and run. Dick doesn't worry about them, though, knowing they’ll be caught by the officers Gordon has stationed surrounding the block. 

The numbers soon lessen enough that B is able to fall back to check on Tim, Dick taking over his position while Cass covers for him. This way, he can hear snippets of the terse conversation Bruce and Jason are exchanging even as Dick takes down the bolder thugs.

“Unresponsive…..new strain…..elevated heart rate…..pupils completely blown…..”

The information just makes Dick’s blood boil even more, and if his next few punches are a little stronger than warranted? Well, Cass is the only one who notices, and he knows she won’t tell.

***

Bruce’s stone begins falling apart before his desperate eyes. “No, Bruce, you’re just lost, you’re not dead! I’ll find you, okay, I swe-” Tim’s not able to get the sentence out before the dust is drifting away, the wind whipping the grains into his face, his hair, his unprotected eyes as he cries, “Bruce, please.”

When he opens his eyes again, rubbing the gritty feeling of his dad’s ashes out of his lashes, all the stones around him are slowly disintegrating, as if his screams had shaken the earth, forcing them to break off into pieces.

“Dames,” he whispers, reaching out for a grave that is much too small, but it’s gone before his barely-working legs can take him there. There’s a soft thud next to him, and Tim barely catches Dick’s name before his older brother’s headstone is falling, sinking into the ground.

Cass, Barbara, Alfred, Duke, Cassie, Selina, Dana, Pru, Z and Owens and everyone else, all the people that Tim hadn’t managed to save, was too weak to keep alive, crumbling, their names and legacies disappearing before him in a cloud of dust, even as Tim tries desperately to call them back, surprised that he's still able to cry, with his eyes so full of ash.

But they don't listen, swirling together before lifting into the mass of clouds surrounding the cemetery, casting dark shadows on the brown grass, the trees withering and twisting till they're blackened and dead.

Now that all the graves are gone, Tim can see past the expanse of the cemetery, and he almost chokes when he sees it. Just a wide expanse, dunes of burnt white sand, like the time when he’d been stabbed by the Widower and that orange had been stained with red. With rising fear, fear that boils and pushes up his throat till he’s panting for breath, Tim realizes that the ruddy color of the sky is only a reflection of the desert around him, empty for miles and miles and miles—

The grass that was once beneath his feet has already sunk into the rising sand, the black trees decomposing into white till the graveyard is indistinguishable from its surroundings. The sun pushes out from one of the dark, corpse-heavy clouds up above, glaring its harsh white light on Tim’s now bare back as he tries to breathe, sand filling his lungs and chafing across his bare skin. He realizes that the raining ash, the white flakes that could be mistaken for snow if they didn’t scald his shoulders, was sand, rising above his knees like water.

Panicking, Tim digs his way out of the burning sand and begins running as fast as he can, sinking into the soft earth. He screams, once, twice, but it goes unanswered, so finally, he decides to save his breath, gasping as heavy, hot air sears down his throat. The sand is on fire, at least Tim’s pretty sure it is, with how it burns the soles of his feet as he runs, the green pixie boots lost in the desert somewhere behind him.

Soon enough, the white sands disappear and fade away beneath his exhausted feet, making way for hard black cement. Tim looks up in confusion, and his face melts in relief at the sight of Gotham’s high spires twisting around him. He was home; it all must have just been a dream! The too-bright sun has finally disappeared beneath the dense clouds, and Tim feels like he can finally take a breath without choking.

He runs quickly down the street he's on, trying to take stock of his surroundings, but it's oddly difficult, the roads eerily empty.

"Batman?" he calls out in his comm, which had appeared in his ear upon recognizing Gotham's gothic architecture (and isn't that _weird_ ), hoping that someone is in range.

There's no answer. "Oracle?" he shouts, more hesitantly this time, hoping that the woman would pick up his voice in one of her many cameras littering Gotham's landscape.

There's still no answer. Frowning, Tim shoots his grapple to the nearest gargoyle, flying up to a low roof. He can't see anyone. Shaking his head a bit, Tim looks again. He jumps onto a higher building to get a better view, but it's still just as empty as before. There are no cars honking at each other on the street, no civilians shouting and picking fights on the side-walks, and most importantly, _no vigilantes on the roofs_.

There's no one but Tim. A familiar fear beginning to creep up his chest, Tim skips another rooftop, running now, the thump of his black combat boots echoing in his ears as he calls out,

"Hood!"

"Nightwing!"

"Batgirl!"

"Black Bat!"

"Signal!"

"Bluebird!"

"Robin!"

Only silence greets him, the city swallowing up the names as soon as they leave his lips. Tim reaches another part of Gotham, he has to have, with how far he's run. To his despair, everything has blurred together and he can't seem to tell where he is.

What he does know is that he hasn't seen a single person in the last twenty minutes, ever since he set foot in the city (ever since he watched his brother's headstone fall apart in his hands-), hasn't seen a single member of his family patrolling the roofs.

He's alone. The realization he's been trying to push away ever since he'd called his dad's name and was met with silence, suddenly crashes down around him. He falls to his knees for what seems like the thousandth time. Blankly, he notices that he's reached the highest tower in the city, the Wayne Enterprises logo glittering under the edge of the roof. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters as he realizes that everyone's dead; everyone's gone and they've left him behind and he's all _alone_. 

Tim screams. Wrenching cries that rip their way out of his chest burn as he shouts, screaming for someone, anyone, please, _please_. No one answers him, and Tim sobs with the weight of his deceased, practically crawling to the edge of the building as cry after cry racks his body. The ground is far, far away from the lip of the building, but it's never looked closer or more appealing as Tim, with a final, painful breath, tips himself over. Because if they won't come back, then he'll just have to find them himself.

That's the last thought that crosses his mind as he finally hits the ground, vision going black.

***

“What did you say his heart rate was again?”

Jason frowns, knowing Bruce wouldn’t forget such a vital piece of information. “140. Why?”

Bruce snarls, looking away from his younger son’s glassy eyes to rip the gauntlet off his wrist, pressing two fingers to his radial artery. “Because his heart isn’t beating.”

The second those words leave his mouth, Dick is at his side, pushing Jason to the side to begin divesting Tim of chest armor. Bruce nods at him over his son’s body, and Jason gets up, pulling out the gun he’d holstered when the man had arrived and moving to aid in the fight.

As soon as the boy’s chest is free, Bruce's un-gauntleted hands are there, pressing down as he begins administering CPR. He keeps his mind calm and level-headed, but it’s so hard, too hard with his son lying beneath him, mouth open but not _breathing_ , even as Dick blows air into him, Bruce trying to kickstart his heart with every pump of his interlocked hands.

Finally, _finally_ , Tim splutters into Dick’s mouth, and with every cough, Bruce feels the weight on his chest he didn’t even know was there, lighten.

The relief dies a little when he notices that Tim’s still not seeing anything, eyes watering at the hallucinations the fear toxin is feeding him. The boy’s heart has returned to its speedy rhythm, and there’s a high chance he'll relapse if they don't get him an antidote.

If Bruce was any less trained than he was, he would have startled at the light tap on his shoulder. Cass crouches next to him, eyes scanning the shaking boy lying on the dirty cement. He feels his heart break a little when he sees the devastation on her face at whatever she reads on Tim. It makes him want to track down every person who’s ever hurt his son and instill the fear of Batman in them. 

Cass narrows her eyes at him under her dominos at him, and Bruce realizes that she’s got blood on her shoulders. Before he can ask, though, she just waves her hand as if dismissing the question. “Not mine. You take him. Me and Steph will finish.”

Noticing his hesitation, his daughter shakes her head at him, face solemn. “We will be fine. Not Tim.”

Bruce nods, and she gives a satisfied nod before getting up and signaling Stephanie. Dick helps him carefully heft Tim’s limp body up into his arms, draping the black cape over him as the rest of the boys pull out their grapples along with them. Making sure Tim is secure in his grip, Bruce shoots his own one-handedly, flying into the air before any new attacks can be made.

“Father, where is the Batmobile?” Damian asks into his comm as Bruce lands on the roof of the warehouse Scarecrow had attempted to make his getaway from without a whisper.

“Around the corner,” Bruce replies, sprinting across the rooftop and holding Tim just a little bit closer to his chest, grapple already reloading. They finally jump down into the right alley, reaching the vehicle just as Tim starts quivering again, hitting uncoordinated fists against the bat on his chest as the whimpering picks up to soft screams muffled in his cape.

Sliding into the Batmobile as Red Hood and Robin cover them, Bruce reluctantly hands Tim over to Dick in the passenger seat, giving the other two a split second to jump in before he’s gunning it to the Cave.

***

It hurts more than he'd thought it would. The ache whispers up his body, and he feels vaguely disjointed from it, eyes blearily blinking open only to be met with the black that was his final goodbye to his city. Tim frowns. Is this where people went when they were dead? It had to be, right?

But if it was where people went after they were dead, then where was his family? Grunting, Tim pushes at the darkness, the pain in his limbs forgotten as his hands meet cold stone( _again_ ). Huh. Slowly, inklings of an idea formed in Tim's head, and he can't stop the gasp of horror as he pushes at the lid of his _own tombstone_.

It doesn't move or even slightly budge, even as Tim shouts and shouts, calling for his friends and family and heroes. They don't hear him, but he hears them. He doesn't know how, but he can. He just knows that right outside of where he’s been buried alive, they are talking and laughing with each other. He wants to go to them, to grasp them in his arms till he knows they're real, but they don't _hear_ him.

Every word that filters faintly through the stone, the voices warm and smooth and happy, leave a heavier weight on Tim's heart, as more tears leak from his reddened eyes at their good riddance and contentment that he was finally gone. How did Tim never understand that he wasn’t wanted when his own mother had died halfway across the world because she couldn’t stand to be around him for more than a few months? Tim’s pleas get quieter with every word until he’s just shaking softly inside the cold stone, breath coming in little hiccups as the oxygen is slowly sucked out of the tomb.

One of the voices from outside succeeds in breaking his heart, what was left of it anyway. It's Dick, the man's voice as cheerful as ever as he asks, and Tim can practically see the roll of his eyes- "Is he still crying in there?"

Suddenly, he's filled with anger. With a surge of strength (and a healthy dose of desperation), he pushes the stone lid off, throwing himself out of the narrow space to wretchedly gulp in oxygen, as if every gasp was his last. Immediately, though, the setting throws him off. He'd expected himself to be in a garden, maybe, or even a crypt. But instead, the ceiling is painted with bright circus colors, stripes running down the walls as Tim spins around, disoriented by the loud music and jostling of the crowd, arms sliding and slithering around him, reminding him too much of dark catacombs under cities of light. Disoriented or not, though, it’s impossible to miss the announcer's voice as he booms into a microphone, "Ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure to present: The Flying Graysons!"

 _No_ , Tim's at the back of the roiling crowd, and no matter how fast he pushes through the shadowy mass, the Graysons still fall, hitting the ground right as Tim finally bursts into the ring.

Their bodies are still, lifeless, just as Tim feared. Then he sees the little boy curled up between the two parents, the glassy blue eyes devoid of any warmth- 

The child’s voice is startling, high and reedy like he imagines Dick’s must have been. “Why didn’t you save me? Why weren’t you fast enough?” Tim can’t reply, heart sinking as if it was made of stone as the child accusingly continues, “Why couldn’t you save us if you knew?”

“Dick, I-” Tim chokes out, reaching out for his older brother, apologies ready to spill from his lips but the ground is already falling from beneath him, and then _he’s_ falling, the crowd shouting and jeering and fading into black as he lands in a heap, surrounded by a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Coughing, he looks up, confused at seeing a blonde woman, dressed in a nursing outfit and tapping her smoke against the wooden beam she was leaning against. Tim’s about to tell her that she shouldn’t do that, didn’t she know how easily the dry wood could catch fire—when a mad, too familiar cackle pierces his ears.

Voice stuck in his throat, Tim turns, eyes widening with horror when he sees the Joker’s garish figure bearing down upon him. The madman isn’t focused on him though, too occupied with the broken, bloodied bird lying beneath him. And even with his years of training, the sight of the villain freezes him where he stands.

***

Alfred looks up from the standard post-Scarecrow medical equipment he’s setting up when the Batmobile roars into the Cave, its occupants piling out in a rush. Bruce practically runs over to the hospital bed set-up in the middle of the Medbay, cowl already pushed off his head, the other three boys not far behind.

Gently laying Tim down, Alfred and Damian begin the process of stripping the unconscious vigilante of the Red Robin suit as Dick begins hooking up the monitors to the boy’s translucent skin. Bruce and Jason, who’s left his helmet by the foot of the bed, are already by the stocked lab, the younger pulling out an evidence bag that the man immediately begins testing. And it still surprises Alfred, that even after all those years of animosity and fighting, even with that tension still making most of their interactions fraught, the second that one of their own is in danger the two are able to work as seamlessly together as they did before the latter's death.

“His heart stopped beating, Alfie,” Dick says brokenly, and Alfred takes a moment to take in how the man is practically shaking. “It’s a stronger strain. The normal antidote didn’t—it couldn’t even do anything—”

Alfred places a strong, comforting hand on his shoulder. “He is in the best hands he can be, Master Dick. He will be fine.” He has to be, the family would break apart if Tim wasn’t.

Dick nods, frown deepening on his face despite the words of reassurance. His hand trembles as it reaches out to brush a strand of Tim’s hair out of his scrunched up, bloody face (and Alfred wonders how that happened. Had they ripped the poor boy’s mask off without any solvent?). “Is he still crying in there?” the man asks, voice sorrowful at Tim’s hitched breaths, his wet cheeks.

Alfred takes a heavy breath, turning around to check over the monitors as he says again, as he _hopes_ , “He will be fine.” Alfred wonders if he’s trying to convince himself, as well.

***

After giving Jason one last resounding _smack_ with the crowbar in his hands, the boy giving a soft groan in response as it made contact with already bruised skin, the Joker looks up at him, considering, before his face breaks out into a huge smile. Tim immediately feels shivers run down his spine. When he tries to back away, he finds that he can’t, colorful jester boots keeping him stuck in place. 

“Why, hello, Junior! My, my, my, what a surprise to see you here…” the Joker laughs again and Tim realizes with horror what he’s been dressed in, a gaudy purple suit, his hands deathly pale because of the bleach staining his skin.

“Well, since you’re already here, then you can do me a favor. You can do that, can’t you, sonny?” the man asks sarcastically, and for some reason Tim finds himself nodding, a pleased smile painted on his face despite the turmoil he feels inside. The Joker laughs delightedly, before tossing a small device his way.

Reflexes kicking in, Tim catches it. It’s a bit too inconspicuous for Joker’s normal, but he knows exactly what it is the second his eyes find the bright red countdown.

“Nice catch, JJ!” the Joker screeches, swinging the bar down again. “Now, whaddya say we blow this joint?”

“Sure, Pops.” Tim can’t recognize his voice, his laugh high and reedy as he presses down on the big red button with his oversized comical gloves. Jason gives a soft moan from where he’s lying on the floor, and Tim can barely hear the quiet, “Mom?” before the warehouse is set ablaze. The awful sensation of _burning_ clouds Tim’s senses as he watches the purple fabric wither away to charred black even as he finally regains control over his limbs, immediately scrambling over to where Jason is now screaming.

“Robin,” he says, voice tripping over itself as he touches Jason’s arm, yanking back his hand when he burns himself. “Jason!”

***

Jason hisses as a drop of whatever chemical Bruce was mixing hastily into the vial falls onto his glove, burning through the material like water as he quickly pulls it off.

“You’re really gonna put _that_ into Babybird?” he quips, shifting his stance for what seems like the twentieth time in the last five minutes they’ve been standing there. Stirring a bit more frantically as Tim continues to scream and sob from the Medbay, Jason watches as Bruce tries to work as fast as possible to find the antidote.

His father shoots him a dry look over the working antidote at his words. He opens his mouth to say something, but Damian bursting in with all the fanfare of a child who’s trying not to show he’s frightened cuts him off as they both look up.

“Drake’s coughing up blood, Father. We need to administer the antidote now, or it may—it may be too late.” His voice holds steady, but he stutters slightly on the last bit.

Jason curses, turning back to Bruce, whose focus is shifting rapidly from the screen with the antivenom readout to the antidote that he’s still working on. His hands move rapidly, and Jason quickly moves to join him, working in tandem as the brat taps his foot impatiently behind him, tossing furtive glances over his shoulder to where Tim’s hysterics have reduced to sickening gurgles. 

“Father, _now_.”

Bruce grabs one of the ready to go sterile syringes, filling it with the antidote as fast as he can without running the chance of accidentally overdosing Tim, before tossing it to Damian who snatches it from him and races out of the room, the other two hot on his heels.

***

There’s a knife at his throat. Robin is holding a knife at his throat, right over that scar Jason had given him all those years ago—wait. That didn’t make any se—

Jason’s body explodes in a mess of blood and bone, and the knife held at his throat buries itself into his neck, ripping through the bright red bowtie with ease as Tim splutters blood. 

“No!” he shouts, pulling at the stupid suit, burned black and covered in blood. Jason’s blood—Robin’s blood—seems to sink into the purple till it feels like it’s practically molded to his body.

Tim looks up again. He’s outside of a theater as muted shouts inside the building filter out in the dark alley. Under the shroud of the black cowl that hides him in the shadows, he watches as a small boy leads his finely dressed parents out a side door, watches as a lone man walks up to meet them. He watches Thomas Wayne hand over his wallet, his ring, ushering the scared, wide-eyed little boy behind him. He watches the man reach over to grasp Martha Wayne’s pearl necklace before her husband pushes him off. Tim watches, silent tears running down his face as if he’s seeing a sad movie play out in front of him, as the man pulls a gun. He watches Thomas’s mouth move, watches him try and cover both his wife and son as the man presses the trigger. He watches Martha’s lips part in a gasp as she grips her crying son as they’re both splattered with her husband’s blood, he watches the man heft the gun up and press the trigger again. He watches the child’s tears run as his mother drops to join his father.

Tim can’t move from his solitary position, he can’t help Bruce, his dad, until the man decides to go off script and aims the barrel at the little boy’s head.

The break from the story Tim has read in hundreds of old, scrounged newspapers is what allows him to move from his frozen position and he lurches forward, hand reaching out for the crying child.

But he’s too late, and the bullet finds its home in his dad’s brain. His fault, again, and this time there was no time travel loophole to get him back. This was _real_.

Tim falls to the ground with Bruce, hands numbly clutching at the little boy’s little suit, stroking the extra-small tie covered with dancing monkeys as he listens to the pitter-patter of the man’s shoes as he runs down the alley. Bloodied hands touch a soft cheek before Tim’s standing, rage and sorrow curling up in a deep place he can’t quite put a finger on, and he’s pulling a gun out of his tainted uniform, the Red Robin suit that’s always been redder than Robin, and he’s aiming it at the fleeing man, who’s already reached the mouth of the street, but Tim knows he won’t miss.

Bruce would be disappointed in him, but Bruce is dead, slumped over in his mother’s embrace, shielded by his father’s bleeding body, and Tim’s the only one left. And he can’t let the man just get away with it, with taking Bruce away from him again.

He shoots him and the man goes down without a word. Tim reholsters the gun, turning around to see if he could move the bodies off the road, but he chokes and stumbles back when he sees that there are a lot more corpses than there were before, blanketing the wet cement. Jason. Dick. Damian, Cass, Steph, Duke, Barbara, bloodied and broken, _no_ —

***

Damian’s eyes widen when he sees the state Drake is in as Pennyworth tries to clean up the congealed blood that flows freely from his nose and mouth, a little starting to seep from his ears too.

At the sound of his footfalls, Grayson’s gaze shoots up from where he’s holding Drake’s shoulders down. “You have the antidote?” he asks, hope lighting up his eyes as they land on the syringe clutched in Damian’s hand.

Damian nods his assent, and Alfred quickly wipes an antiseptic cloth over his brother’s erratically moving chest as he moves closer, hand poised to deliver the antidote as Todd joins Grayson in holding Drake down.

His father’s gaze is heavy on his back as Damian fits the syringe into the IV leading into Drake’s sallow arm, slowly pushing down on the plunger.

***

Tim trips from where he realizes he’d been running, gritty concrete scratching his elbows as he pushes himself back up to see what he’s fallen on. Immediately, he turns and empties the remainder of his stomach. His parents just lie there, his mom’s lips still wet from poison, his dad staring upwards listlessly as a boomerang laid buried in his chest.

“M-mom? Dad?” he whispers, reaching up with fingers that felt like they had never been _not_ covered in red. 

Somehow, their eyes open. The feeling of elation dies in his chest when he realizes that their eyes are not the warm blue and brown they had once been, but deep, rotting black. He flinches back, but his mother’s icy hand snaps out and locks his wrist in a death grip.

“You did this to us,” she rasps, nothing in her voice but cold, hard fury.

Pulling away is futile, but Tim tries anyway. “No, Mom, I didn’t, please, I s-”

His dad stands looming over him with a mighty frown curling over his face as he shakes his head. “Yes, you did. You’re the reason we’re dead. _You_ didn’t save us.”

“I didn’t mean for you to—I’m sorry, Dad, I-”

But they’re falling back again, eyes closed despite the promises and pleas spilling from him. Tim heaves a sob when he realizes they can’t hear his apologies, curling up against his cold mother, hiding his face in the folds of her silk dress like he was a child again.

He only opens them again when the fabric unravels beneath his fingers and the cold presence is replaced by a burning heat. Tim tiredly opens his eyes, probably ripping out a few lashes since they’re practically glued together with blood and tears, only to find himself back in the cemetery. But this time there’s a high wall surrounding the grass, keeping him in, sand spilling over the edges like a waterfall.

The gravestones slowly disappear beneath the rising sand, and Tim lets them, too exhausted to move. The only sounds he can hear are his own ragged breathing.

He should have known he could never have escaped from here. Why had he even bothered the first time? It had only gotten worse, after all.

“Tim!” Tim frowns at the faint call of his name, before brushing it off, dismissing the hallucination for what it was. He was insane, just like Dick had said.

He was destined to be alone, to kill everyone he’d ever loved.

“Tim!”

He wasn’t wanted, he-

“ _Tim!_ ”

Tim’s eyes fly open.

***

The boy awakes with a gasp, immediately vomiting into the can Alfred quickly moves in front of him. The second he regains his wits, though, he’s throwing himself off the bed. He starts clawing at his chest and neck, and Dick immediately moves forward to restrain him even as Jason locks his arms around him from behind. Tim only thrashes more.

“Let him go,” Bruce orders, and his sons follow, albeit a little reluctantly. Damian puts down the used syringe on the table.

Tim quiets when they stay at a safe distance away from him as he softly pants, defensively pressing himself against the bed frame like he was afraid he was going to fall over(or like he needed something to ground himself).

“Tim,” Bruce asks cautiously. “Are you with us now?”

His son considers him warily, still not moving any closer. Probably still suffering from the side effects, then.

Before Bruce can say anything, Tim blurts out, voice watery and rough, “I’m sorry!”

“Timmy?” Dick asks, taking a step forward.

The movement sparks another stream of words from the boy, and Tim begins babbling, “I’m s—sorry I didn’t save them, Bruce, please, I’m sorry I killed him, don’t go, _please_ -”

Dick’s brow furrows, and he looks like he’s about to move forward to try and comfort his little brother, but Bruce knows it would just do more harm than good right now. When he holds up his hand, his eldest son stops, and Bruce takes a careful step forward, making sure to give Tim space. “It wasn’t real, Tim,” he says calmly. “You’re safe now.”

“What did you get me for the first birthday I spent at the Manor?” Tim asks, low like he’s expecting disappointment. 

Bruce’s lip quirks. “A key.”

Tim gives him a cautious look, one that he had been expecting but hurt nonetheless. Holding the boy’s gaze, Bruce slowly opens his arms. Whatever the boy sees must deem him as safe, because the next second has Tim launching himself into his arms, but Bruce barely stumbles as his arms wrap around his bloodied seventeen-year-old son. Sitting down on the rumpled bed sheets, Bruce holds the boy close to his chest as he cries, hands gripping his undersuit like Tim was afraid he was going to disappear.

“I’m here, I’m right here, son,” Bruce murmurs, stroking his dirty hair. The words just make him cry harder, though, and Bruce shoots Dick a panicked look over Tim’s head. Dick just rolls his eyes at him, sitting down on one side of him and wrapping an arm around Tim’s back, whispering ‘good tears’ to him as the boy settles into his embrace.

A few looks from Dick has Jason sitting down stiffly next to Bruce, setting a hesitant hand under where Dick’s is looped around Tim’s shoulders. Damian pulls himself into Dick’s lap, tugging the man’s other arm around him and discreetly curling himself slightly towards Tim’s shaking body. Alfred places a hand on Bruce’s back, and they all pretend to not hear his sigh of relief.

Bruce still feels that well of guilt rise in him at the feeling of wet tears at the crook of his neck from his too-young son, but the feeling of relief overrides it as he hugs Tim’s breathing body closer. Because he _is_ breathing, he is _alive_ , and Bruce knows he wouldn’t be able to deal with losing another son, not without Tim.

His other sons were around him as well, all healthy and alive, despite the nicks and scratches they’d taken from the fight. In the end, that was all Bruce could hope for. 

Bruce can't help but give them all another once-over, just in case. He notices that Tim has moved a little out of his embrace, leaning more into Dick to look up at Bruce with a pensive look on his face. His face reddens a bit at being caught staring, but before he can duck down again, Bruce pulls a hand out of the bat-tangle and reaches up to push a messy strand of hair behind the boy’s ear.

“We’re real, Tim,” he murmurs, wondering at what Tim could possibly have seen.

Tim takes a deep breath, and Bruce’s heart aches at how much pain he’s gone through, at how much pain Scarecrow had put the boy through, put them all through. And no matter how he knows he can never go back on the one rule, there are times when he comes close, when he can’t help but want to. It’s one of those times when Tim shakes his head a little, burrowing himself back into Bruce’s chest armor that he can’t believe is even remotely comfortable, and whispers,

“I want you to be.”

Bruce holds his son all the more tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> I will be posting one whumptober fic per week, so thats four in total that i'll be doing(unconnected), so stay posted!  
> And if you saw anything in this fic that you'd like me to tag, please don't hesitate to ask.
> 
> As a side note, stray a little closer to home has very much not been put on hiatus, its coming, just a little slowly. Fingers crossed it'll be up in a week or two but no promises


End file.
